I see someone already mentioned Yamato Waki. Her stuff is fantastic. Wada Shinji's asskicking heroines are also favorites of mine. Actually, I like most of that classic 70s (or 70s-style) stuff. It tends to have more 3D women and more interesting plots. (I suppose it's because anything really bad from the 70s has been forgotten by now. If you look at current series, you see everything, not just the classics that have stood the test of time.)

Honestly though, for something with a shounen style but good female characters who are sympathetic and who I can relate to, I'd just read Q.E.D. (It's a shounen series, but the women aren't treated in a creepy fanservice-y way.)

hmm... stuff from the 70's (very often shoujo from that era have a 'meatier ' characterization and are more balanced [also in the sense of appealing potential for male readers] overall than a lot of contemporary shoujo IMO ) -->points at post above ^^. ---For more recent titles I go by author's style or magazines: once I realized they share - provided the demographic - a certain 'style' I like, I started scanning titles and series by the same artist/magazine hoping for more titles in a similar vein. Coelacanth, already mentioned in this topic , is a good example of manga that features elements enjoyable by both genders of readers. If not for the magazine -hence the shoujo/josei/shonen/seinen label - you coud happily consider it a seinen IMO. ---Tokage could fit the bill of josei-with-seinen-flavour. It's not by chance it's serialized in Comic-Zero Sum too. Another seinen-like josei? Basara has already been mentioned here somewhere. By the same author 7 seeds is a good psychological-action-sci-fi-horror survival seinen-like josei manga

On the contrary, a very shoujo-like seinen to me is Bitter Virgin. That crazy girl rival... @_@while a very josei-like seinen (in a veery good way) is Emma

I don't think not having romance is a qualification for making a shoujo more shounen-like. There are plenty of shounen with romance in them, and it's not like there aren't any non-romance shoujo (though, admittedly, this is kind of a rarity).